


A Question for the Asking

by Colourofsaying



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5489207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/pseuds/Colourofsaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lin finds himself increasingly intrigued by his new wife, but isn't sure how to ask her what's going on, or even sure if he should ask her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Question for the Asking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myconstant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myconstant/gifts).



The first thing Lin learns, after his wedding, is that his wife trusts him with everything but her thoughts, feelings, and decisions. Which, reduced to bare essentials, means that she is reasonably certain he’ll keep her from physical harm. He can’t really blame her, but he also can’t say it doesn’t rankle. Phryne says to give her time, that she’ll open up when she realizes that, like her first husband, Lin’s first goal is to give her the world (especially all the things that girls, and in particular girls like Camellia, are not generally allowed to have). So he watches her play the obedient, docile wife in public, applauds as she fights her way through chequebook and management meetings, and sighs as she hides her expressions when he walks in the room.

He doesn’t know where she keeps her writings, though he often - briefly - glimpses her composing them around the house. It’s not that he’d read them, unless she offered, but it’s galling that she trusts him so little.

And besides, he’s curious. The woman Phryne discovered, the fighting-fit polylingual Communist rebel, she interests him. The woman he lives with - it’s not that she doesn’t interest him, exactly, because he knows well enough that this woman is as much a part of his Camellia as those more inflammatory aspects, and his Silver Lady would eviscerate him with a thought if he ever dared to think otherwise, it’s just that he never has all she is, or even the greater part of it. She confuses him, she fascinates him. He can’t even watch her with all the interest he feels. If he tries, the faint glimpses of her he receives vanish again beneath the well-polished facade.

Lately, though, he thinks she might be trying to reach out to him. Strange little objects have begun to show up around their house, carefully and tastefully presented, but he can’t fathom where she has gotten them, or what about them caught her eye. While he will concede that the silver statuette of Venus is proportionate and well-made, no careful presentation allows it to blend with the rest of the house’s decor. Nor does the sampler embroidered with violets and a quote from Keats. It is, of course, possible that she has a fancy to decorate her home in the manner of a white woman, but… And as a fighter, it is possible that she has some interest in blades, but why would she display a collection of common pocket knives behind glass in the drawing room? Perhaps she wants him to ask her about them.

He does try, once.

“This is quite an interesting piece,” he says, picking up the golden deer with the (probably genuine, if his best guess is anything to go by) ruby eyes he found on his dressing table. “A gift, love?”

“Of course,” she says, her eyes downcast. She is leaned against the pillows, atop the rich red coverlet that warms their bed in the chill of an Australian July. She is wrapped in a russet robe, and she is beautiful. He sets the deer down and crosses the room to the bed, sliding across the cover towards her. When he pulls her into the crook of his arm and kisses the crown of her head, she does not resist. She may, he thinks, a little smug, even nestle a little against him.

“Wherever did it come from?”

“I picked it up on the docks,” she says, her voice placid, and he is pleased that she thought of him in her errands, though not entirely sure why the deer reminded her of him. He looks down at her, at the smooth black hair, at the tip of her nose in her downturned face, at the faint curve of a breast, revealed in the disarrangement of their embrace, and makes a pleased sound, sliding his hand up to caress her. She sighs into the touch, and the talk drifts away into a different sort of conversation - one, Lin feels, they are much more skilled at conducting.

 

He is remembering the evening, the next day, sitting in his office at the warehouse. It is a pleasant memory, and one that he thinks may be recalled more frequently than many, albeit one not in the least appropriate for work. In remembering, though, he is reminded that there was little enough that either of them said, and that not a proper question from him, nor anything like an answer from her.

If he had asked, he wonders if she would have answered.

The thought is not pleasant.

But there are ways and ways of finding out what thoughts and stories lie beneath his wife’s shy smile, and perhaps the simplest is to go to the great detective herself. If there is a secret in this city of theirs, she is sure to know it; if she does not know it, knowing that a secret lies unrevealed is, usually, more than enough to prompt her investigation.

And, after all, she is a woman, and women talk to one another. He knows that the two of them meet from time to time, for tea and talk.

 

Phryne soon makes it plain to him that his charm, though manifest, is not in the least adequate for the drawing of secrets from a clever and canny woman. She smiles and demurs, pours him tea and smiles slyly, and tells him nothing at all. It is Dorothy from whom he receives any knowledge at all - as she hands him his coat, she asks him,

“Mr. Lin, are you wanting to know Camellia better?”

The question surprises him. In his experience, Dorothy is shy but resilient, a capable shadow. He is not entirely certain that she has ever addressed him directly. He nods, and takes his hat from her gently.

“Because, well, sir, she’s worth knowing. And if you want to know someone, you know, like really know them, because you, well, you care about them, you’ve got two choices. You can ask, or you can watch. Either way, you show that person you want to know, you know? It shows you’re putting in a good effort, sir, and a girl likes to know she’s worth the effort.”

She looks up at him, and he smiles at her.

“Thank you for the advice, Dorothy,” he says. “Both kind and wise. Phryne has an able friend in you.”

She blushes, and bows him out. There is, he thinks, much more that she could tell him, but to ask her would be unkind, since refusal would be rude and harsh, and an answer would be a betrayal of more than his wife - it would be a betrayal of her friend, and all that she believed in. And between the two of them, he had learned something - from Phryne, that there was something to be learned. From her companion, that whatever that something was, to fail to pursue it would be to fail his wife.

 

The walk home is long, and those over the next three weeks are no shorter. He wracks his thoughts for some understanding, observes Camellia’s silences, her smiles, the bruises on her hands and arms and legs. He notices the slow accumulation of strange and lovely objects that fill their home.

But it is not until he sees the silver grail twined about with leaping fish that the faintest light begins to dawn. He has seen that cup before; it stands - it stood - in the office of another merchant of Melbourne, a man trading in exotic lumbers - and perhaps, in other, less savory things, though as far as Lin knows the rumors are only that. He had not liked the man, in the few dealings he had with him - he was loud, and rude, and so clearly condescending that Lin had nearly refused to trade with him. However, he was also very stupid, and thought himself canny to exchange a cargo of bright rough-woven silks in simple dyes for a shipload of pernambucco from Brazil.

Lin has never been sure if the man ever realized that the deal he thought so good was nothing of the sort; if he had, he doubts the man would ever blame himself for the poor trade. No doubt the man calls him a cheat and worse but he cannot find it in himself to be sorry for it.

He cannot see how Camellia, with her fine sharp pride and her sharper mind, should come to receive a gift from this man. From all that he knows of her, she is more likely to throw a gift from a bigot back in his face, and laugh to see the blood run if he has been foolish enough to hand her something heavy and hard. For a woman named for a tender flower that falls at the lightest rain and bruises from the brush of fingertips, his wife is surprisingly ferocious. She is glorious and golden, and she would not accept a gift of any sort from a man like that, much less a gift of this sort; the man had been proud of his goblet, and a gift like that would be binding.

At the same time, he cannot quite see her stealing it outright, either, no matter how rude and repellent she found him. To take it from him, yes, but she would take it from him in such a way that he could never again lay claim to it, no matter how he tried, and she would do it in front of his face. He smiled to think of it - the excess of the man, his loud voice and heavy hands and sweat, confronted with his Camellia. In his mind, she brandishes the grail like a mockery.

And so, he watches - or rather, looks, since now he has a focus for his watching, has blurred the backdrop that hid his wife from him. He reads the newspapers with a new diligence, particularly the crime blotters, and while previously his attention had been for mentions of Phryne’s name, he now looks for robberies in which little was taken but much available, for break-ins where destruction was the primary focus, for notices that are strangely vague about what, precisely, the nature of the offense was.

There is, unsurprisingly, a pattern.

He can’t say he is terribly upset at the slow wearing-away of fortune leeching the vitality from men such as the merchant of lumber, or at the peculiar plague of pernicious swordfish drilling the hulls of opium import ships.

Still, he remains unsure precisely what her role in this is, or whether the misfortunes befalling the less savoury of Melbourne’s merchants are the extent of Camellia’s altruistic efforts. Perhaps, now that he knows the part, Phryne would tell him the whole, but he finds himself reluctant to ask her. There are clues enough, now that he knows to look for them. Dinners out, with no return invitations. Rooms, previously open, that Camellia has announced are drafty and unnecessary, and which have been shut up till they have need of them. And the bruises, when he knows she has never in her life been awkward or clumsy. There is more to the story.

Theirs was not a traditional courtship, in their own culture or the Western one that sways them, albeit in different ways. There were no meetings with matchmakers, there were no quiet conversations alone but watched. There were no gifts, and no pretty words. She was dumped on his doorstep and subjected to invasive, violating scrutiny and physical danger, and he - did nothing. Until it was nearly too late.

She has not spoken of her previous husband to him. He is not sure she ever will. But whatever the details of their courtship, this other man won her trust, her love, and her confidence, and when she came away with him, he gave her all the world he had at his hands. Lin knows her family well enough to doubt they would countenance her learning anything beyond the bones of business and whatever arts they felt appropriate for the future matriarch of some undetermined family. They aren’t precisely bad people; they take the world as they are born into it.

But Camellia never has. And he owes it to her, and to himself, to make this life, this marriage that they have stumbled into, one of safety, support, and choice. With every graceful object she displays, she gives him the opportunity to choose her, to see her, to love her. In the same circumstances, surrounded by the same restrictions and betrayals and loss, he cannot quite believe he would have had the same strength. As much as his pride resists the notion, this - this quest of hers is no judgment on him, or on his character. If anything, it is a judgment of the world.

 

So, he looks, and he sees, and he provides her what support he can.  _ I see you _ , he tells her, with the well-stocked medicine cabinet in the bathroom.  _ I hear you _ , he says, when he admires each of her latest trophies.  _ I believe in you _ , he declares, when the rooms where the runaway brides, beaten women, and terrified girls stolen from the bellies of dark ships are always freshly stocked with food and water and medicines, and the little practicalities women without wardrobes would most miss.  _ I trust you _ , he assures her, when he asks if her day’s work has gone well, and does not press for details. She will tell him, he knows, when she is ready, and no sooner. 

When Phryne asks him later, though, he has to admit that he was still somewhat taken aback to walk into his living room one evening after a particularly long day at work, and find Camellia calmly dripping blood into an ornamental vase (his grandmother’s favorite), a shivering and blanket-clad girl curled onto a cushion at her side. The girl flinches when he walks in. Her face is bruised, and from the lay of her arm, it may be broken. Still, no one looks to be in immediate danger of dying.

“How deep is the cut, love?” Lin asks Camellia. She tilts her head up to look at him.

“It is not so bad. A wrapping will do for now, but - the arm is my better one.” And the girl, wherever Camellia has hauled her from, is hurt enough that any attempt on her part to help would only hurt the both of them worse.

“I will wrap it in a moment - let me get some bandages. And I’ll ring Doctor MacMillan, unless she is already on her way.” If he were engaged in the re-abduction of abducted young women, Doctor MacMillan would be his own first choice for dressing their various and sundry injuries.

“Please do.” Camellia gestured with her injured arm. “I am not so skilled at juggling that I can hold the thing entire and dial with one hand alone.”

He passes a hand over her hair, cupping her chin, and drops a kiss on her forehead before he turns to go.

 

It takes him longer than he would like to gather the bandages and ointments together. She requires calm of him, and more of it than even Phryne had ever asked. To see her wounded there, and bleeding, waiting for him to get home - how long had she been waiting for him? - and to move calmly, quietly, slowly, to not frighten that child - he wants to grab her and shake her, or pull her against him and check every inch of her, or pull her into a bed and watch over her until no sign remains that she was ever hurt, that there was ever a sign that she, his golden lady, can  _ be _ hurt, but - she is a grown woman and a strong woman and if she says she is all right he must trust her to be so. 

He lifts the hand towels from the bowl by the basin and drops them on the floor, sweeping a pile of bandages and ointment into the bowl. It hadn’t seemed real, really, when he’d so carefully stocked the cabinet for her. He had only seen bruises. Whatever this secret business of carefully-exacted protection and revenge she had been engaged on, he had seen no serious hurt. The bandages were only a - show, a sign. Had he known then that she could be so hurt? Perhaps he should assign her some companions, some protectors, as Phryne had her Cec and her Burt. Would that be too much interference?

His hands are shaking, and he curls them into fists, lifts them to his mouth. Takes a deep breath, and lowers them. When he stands, he stands firmly, and his hands do not shake. She is not losing so much blood, but she still cannot afford to wait too long. And besides, knowing his wife, if he takes much longer she will simply use the sitting room curtains, and in addition to being beautiful and expensive, they are not at all appropriate for bandages.

He asks their maid to ring the hospital, to tell the doctor that there has been an accident to a guest, and ask if it would be possible to cast a broken limb at their home. He could not make himself lift the receiver, turn the dial. Camellia is waiting, and in any case he is not sure he could keep his voice from shaking. Presumably the doctor has made calls like this before - if not, the girl’s arm will wait till his wife’s has been seen to, and the road from their home to the hospital is not so busy, nor so rough.

When he returns to the sitting room, the women are in much the same position. Camellia looks paler, and he kneels at her feet.

“I am sure you know, but this is going to sting,” he tells her, and pulls back her sleeve to reveal the cut she has been holding closed. It is not so deep, and already the bleeding is slowing. There will be no permanent damage, if it is well-cleaned, though it is likely to scar. He sprays the wound with carbolic acid and dabs the area around it dry. She does not flinch, though the skin around her eyes tightens. The bandage is worse, probably - he is as gentle as he can be, but the balance between gentleness and firmness is a hard one to master, and he has had little experience. More than once, he needs to undo a little of what he has done to avoid putting too much pressure on her arm, or too little. But this ends, and though it should, he thinks, have stitches, that goes beyond what he can do. Doctor MacMillan will know better. This, at least, will keep the most of her blood inside where it belongs.

As he finishes, he lifts her hand to his lips. It is scratched and dirty, the knuckles bruised, and the dried blood is flaking off of it, but it seems largely undamaged, and for that he is grateful.

When he meets her eyes, she is smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> There wasn't room for all the details of Camellia's work as a secret vigilante, unfortunately, but in addition to all the fancy things she takes for Lin, she also grabs pocket-handkerchiefs from her less affluent targets. Dot is helping her turn them into a quilt.


End file.
